Sundogs on the mountain
remind me of you
and your shadow left behind
words I try to share,
chase after on my bicycle,
speeding down the road to
a party
to say goodbye.
It wasn’t goodbye,
not that time.
I don’t know what to
do with the shadow of
that youth.
I try to learn from it, but
its muteness teases me,
on and on I follow it.

Yours–quiet chains jingling
in the Nissan–
a blue car, my first after your crashed
blue truck… or was that
so many years later?
The shadows plant themselves,
fool my memories.
Your ghost never followed me around,
and the two brief visits
remain highlights
that never lose their weight.
Never fall to the concrete and behind
bushes and into the water,
where a cloud happens by
and the fish get cold
as they swim back towards
the sun–
above, the wind carries the cloud
every place they turn,
and shadows darken.